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“Anywhere But Here” is a new, occasional feature where we choose a restaurant that we loathe and tell you, the loyal Foobooz reader, all the other places you could go for better food, booze or service. We know you know this stuff. We’re just here to help. And we’re launching this new project with…

Today is National Cheesecake Day and, unsurprisingly, the brand spankin’ new Cheesecake Factory that opened last month at 15th and Walnut is celebrating its namesake holiday with half-price slices, a new flavor (salted caramel, because no one’s tried that yet…) and god only knows what else.

But you know what? This is Philly. And we can do better than settling for the Cheesecake mothership. So with that in mind, we're giving you some options--for cheesecake, cheese and cake because we don't care how you celebrate, so long as you do it Anywhere But Here.

This, and many others, are bringing Philly’s best bites to your kitchen.

Usually when we talk about food news here, we tell you what’s new and cool, and then we tell you where to go to eat it. This post, however, requires little more than a trip to Barnes & Noble, or (for the remarkably lazy, like myself) an Amazon account.

Philadelphia and the nearby areas have some pretty amazing food and drink, and now many of the recipes are down on paper for your cooking pleasure. We’ve talked cookbooks in the past, but it’s time for a round up of all the delicious (local) stuff that’s been printed since January.

So order a book, even order your groceries, open a bottle of wine. With these books, all the awesomeness of the city's food scene can now happen right in your own kitchen. And you know what's better? Even if you burn it all, you're never too far from the recipe's source, allowing you to give up at any point and make nothing more than a reservation.

Kate Jacoby, co-owner, manager and pastry chef of Vedge and V Street, with her husband, Rich Landau, at Vedge. Photograph by Gene Smirnov

No tattoos. No cursing. No meat, no fish, no eggs, no dairy. No drama. This is a successful chef?

Rich Landau plops a pile of spongy, chalk-colored tofu into a big stainless steel bowl. “This is the most clichéd part of my job,” he says, leaning into the bowl with both hands and tearing the tofu limb from limb, or whatever it is you do to the curd of soybeans. Landau calls tofu “the evil icon of vegetarianism,” and it’s obvious he’s worked with it a few times — check that; a few hundred thousand times — before. Read more »